Part 2 of Oscar Wilde's Conversion.

Part 2 on Oscar Wilde.

Wilde wrote of Jesus' last day on earth as being poetic:

The little supper with his companions, one of whom has already sold him for a price; the anguish in the quiet moon-lit garden; the false friend coming close to him so as to betray him with a kiss; the friend who believed  in him and on whom as on a rock he had hoped to build a house of refuge for man, denying him as the bird cried to the dawn; his own utter loneliness, his submission, his acceptance of everything; and along with it all such scenes as the high priest rending his raiment in wrath, and the magistrate of civil justice calling for water in the vain hope of cleansing himself of that stain of innocent blood that makes him the scarlet figure of history; the coronation ceremony of sorrow, one of the most wonderful things in the whole of recorded time; the crucifixion of the Innocent One before the eyes of his mother and of the disciple whom he loved; the soldiers gambling and throwing dice for his clothes; the terrible death by which he gave the world its most eternal symbol; and his final burial in the tomb of the rich man, his body swathed in Egyptian linen with costly spices and perfumes as though he had been a king's son.

On Christ's love:

He saw that love was the first secret of the world for which the wise men had been looking, and that it was only through love that one could approach either the heart of the leper or the feet of God.

Pity he has, of course, for the poor, for those who are shut up in prisons, for the lowly, for the wretched; but he has far more pity for the rich, for the hard hedonists, for those who waste their freedom in becoming slaves to things, for those who wear soft raiment and live in king's houses. Riches and pleasure seemed to him to be really greater tragedies than poverty or sorrow.

Christ mocked at the 'whited sepulcher of respectability and fixed that phrase forever. He treated worldly success as a thing absolutely to be despised. He saw nothing in it at all. He looked on wealth as an encumbrance to a man.

He pointed out that forms and ceremonies were made for man, not man for forms and ceremonies. The cold philanthropies, the ostentatious public charities, the tedious formalisms so dear to the middle-class mind, he exposed with utter and relentless scorn. He showed that the spirit alone was of value.

The world had always loved the saint as being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of God. Christ, through some divine instinct in him, seems to have always loved the sinner as being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of man. He regarded sin and suffering as being in themselves beautiful holy things and modes of perfection.

Of course the sinner must repent. But why? Simply because otherwise he would be unable to realize what he had done. The moment of repentance is the moment of initiation. More than that; it is the means by which one alters one's past. The Greeks thought that impossible. They often say in their Gnomic aphorisms, 'Even the Gods cannot alter the past.' Christ showed that the commonest sinner could do it, that it was the one thing he could do.

Christ, had he been asked, would have said - I feel quite certain about it - that the moment the prodigal son fell on his knees and wept, he made his having wasted his substance with harlots, his swine herding and hungering for the husks they ate, beautiful and holy moments in his life. It is difficult for most people to grasp the idea. I dare say one has to go to prison to understand it. If so, it may be worth while going.

He sought to be eyes to the blind, ears to the deaf and a cry on the lips of those whose tongues had been tied. His desire was to be to the myriads who had found no utterance a very trumpet through which they might call to heaven.

I find the words of Oscar Wilde to be moving and so poetic. To me, these are the words of a person who appreciates and loves God. He said much more of course, but I can't write it all here. If you can find a copy of De Profundis I think you would get a blessing from it. I find many fine, old books on  http://www.gutenberg.org/  This is where I downloaded my copy of the book.